If I had a real answer to that, I’d be a lot less confused by the election. I mean it most likely comes down to, as it always has, “it’s the economy, stupid.”

If I had to take a guess, all of these massive disagreements online about Gaza and immigration and regulation, to say nothing of Trumps general… terribleness all around… even abortion—it seems to me that all of these issues amount to a few 1/10ths of a percent.

I guess if the economy is good, we keep the administration. If it’s bad, we toss it. And that seems, from my perspective, to be the only thing that matters at all to the electorate. It seems crazy to me that no one is looking into the future to see what is coming.

Anyone who truly cared about the future economy would run screaming from tariffs, so I guess it’s just really about punishing a bad economy, no matter what.

I wish there was another explanation that presented itself. Something to help me understand that didn’t mean the country is a bunch of idiots. But I’ve got nothing.

I did. I understand that there is intellectual criticism of neo-liberalism. I don’t even necessarily disagree with that criticism. I just don’t see any evidence that the vast majority of people actually care.

I just don’t think that’s why. That said, I’ll acknowledge that maybe you’re right and I’m wrong.

Neoliberalism is often associated with a set of economic liberalization policies, including privatization, deregulation, consumer choice, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending. These policies are designed to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.

These things? Your position is the American people rejected her over these things? In favor of Trump?

Look, I don’t know what happened this election, but I don’t see anything here I think the American people would object to. Maybe globalization.

What swathe of policies were bad?

Nothing I enjoy more than asking a good ol’ boy his pronouns.

So what happens if Russia fires up the chat bot and finds 4 times out of 5, it advocates for a surprise first strike?

I mean today, no one is going to leave that kind of decision to an AI, but tomorrow? When the AI is wired into every system and can coordinate an attack or defense 90% faster than humans?

I swear Asimov wrote a story about that…

I’ve had great interactions with doctors. All the time.

On the very few occasions I’ve ever been visited by a cop (once?) it was fine. Couldn’t call it life affirming or anything, but it was polite and respectful both ways.

I’ve had some incredible teachers over the years. My 6th grade math teacher stands out. My biology teacher in high school was also my swim coach, and he was lots of fun. I had some good teachers in college. I had some good teachers in the Army.

I mean I’m not going to pretend the army was a good time, but there were lots of good people in it.

I don’t think I’ve ever really been to court. One time I got called in for jury duty and sat there for 4 hours and that was that. It was fine, you know?

Are there bad examples of all these things out there? Hell yes. Because ask of these people are human just like the rest of us. They have good and bad days. Some are sadistic assholes, others are empathetic and kind - probably just like wherever you are and whatever you do with yourself.

There is one thing I believe holds true. If you see assholes everywhere you go, you’re the problem.

I have access to AI integrated with my IDE. It mostly guesses at the line I’m going to write. It probably gets it right 50% of the time.

It also very, very often suggests stuff that works but isn’t very good. Like it offered some convoluted suggested for adding audit fields to Firebase. Ultimately it did suggest the solution I went with, but only after starting down the road of stupid ideas.

Like, if your code base is pretty good and you just need to tweaks stuff that is already good enough that’s one thing. I frequently look at the code base and wonder if it was implemented by someone who really knows Java at all.

I suppose it might be fair to assume a huge technology company would have their shit together, but technically I work for a huge tech company… just not the same core business. Tech enough that we have a whole mess of internal AI tooling to create AIs for specific things.

We can create an AI agent, but we can’t follow simple fucking rest standards.

Anyway it’s hard to quantify, but I get less mileage out of integrated AI tools than I do bouncing ideas off ChatGPT.

You are anthropomorphizing it. It can give truth or falsehood the same as pages of a book or a funhouse mirror.

If you ask me today, “what is the meaning of life?” I might give you an answer. And if you ask me tomorrow, I might give a different one. You have no way of knowing whether I’m correct today, tomorrow, or ever. But if one of those answers, right or wrong, helps you find meaning, it’s still useful. (As a rhetorical point. I’m definitely the last person anyone should look to to find meaning.)

AI is a lot like that. You give it input, it gives you output, and whether you get anything of value depends greatly on what you are looking for.

I’ve gotten some advice on improving some of my writing. And some of the advice I took, some I ignored, and some I modified before using. I think the writing turned out better, and since I largely write for myself I’m pretty happy with that.

I’ve asked it for help programming, and at times it was helpful and other times cost me hours circling around the same old wrong answers, but there’s every chance I would’ve struggled just as much looking online.

The other day my daughter was making a slushie and it was turning out really wet and gross, so I explained to an AI what we’d done and asked if it had any idea why it didn’t turn out. And it turns out, we were using zero sugar soda which doesn’t work—the sugar is necessary. So we added some simple syrup and it turned out perfectly.

And it was much faster and easier than Google. But if the advice had been wrong, nothing of value would’ve been lost.

trying to fit this square shaped solution into circle shaped holes

This exactly. AI is great for certain things. What everyone tries to use it for, like the bullshit in this article, is not great.

It’s not AI that’s lying. The AI is just doing what AI does.

It’s not a lie, it’s just not what most people think it is. There’s a lot of ignorance and a lot of lies about AI.

Was it Google who claimed 25% of their production code last year was written by AI? Microsoft? Anyway, I’m going to call bullshit on that right now. Or they require a curious amount of bullshit code to run their business.

My twelve year old is Evelyn. My 14 year old is Genevieve. Which is apparently still out there but I thought it was pretty uncommon when we named her.

So what’s the pros and cons of Mint on Ubuntu vs Mint on Debian? I’m more familiar with Ubuntu, and that’s what I’m running on my PC now, but I’m thinking about trying to go back to Mint.

Main things I’ll need to install is development tools (VSCode, IntelliJ, docker, java) plus Firefox, Discord. I’m also running KDE Plasma - it’s nice, but also I don’t really have a strong opinion so if I wasn’t i wouldn’t care all that much. Nvidea graphics, AMD cpu.

I’m a bit frustrated by the weekly or so discord updates and it would be nice if auto update or apt upgrade would just update it, but maybe that’s a completely separate concern.

Anyway if you time to respond I appreciate it. If not that’s cool too. Have a good one!

It was an expressway. There were no lights other than cars. You’re not wrong, had a human sprinted at 20mph across the expressway in the dark, I’d have hit them, too. That being said, you’re not supposed to swerve and I had less than a second to react from when I saw it. It was getting hit and there was nothing I could’ve done.

My point was more about what happened after. The deer was gone and by the time I got to the side of the road I was probably about 1/4 mile away from where I struck it. I had no flashlight to hunt around for it in the bushes and even if I did I had no way of killing it if it was still alive.

Once I confirmed my car was drivable I proceeded home and called my insurance company on the way.

The second deer I hit was in broad daylight at lunch time going about 10mph. It wasn’t injured. I had some damage to my sunroof. I went to lunch and called my insurance when I was back at the office.

No one was hitting it. It ran into the tall weeds (not far, I’ll wager). I couldn’t have found it. Had it been in the road I’d have called it in.

I hit a deer on the highway in the middle of the night going about 80mph. I smelled the failed airbag charge and proceeded to drive home without stopping. By the time I stopped, I would never have been able to find the deer. If your vehicle isn’t disabled, what’s the big deal about stopping?

I’ve stuck two deer and my car wasn’t disabled either time. My daughter hit one and totaled our van. She stopped.

That said, fuck Musk.

I think this is the key right here. The election is important, but most of us have far more immediate concerns.

Pretty sure I’d go full Sith. I’m not super big on hate, but if I could move things and influence people with my mind I’m under no illusions that I would use that power for good.

We simply don’t talk politics. My wife is the peacemaker. When someone brings up something political she shuts that shit down quickly.

It’s when people don’t know what to talk about other than politics that I think they are truly lost. Watch some fucking football and hate on each others’ team. I think some people need that sort of idle animosity.

Anyway, there are more to people than politics.